Art: Boom Behind Bars

In Mexico, where art sometimes crowds murder and politics off the front
page, jailbirds are turning their cells into studios. Last week modern
Mexican Painter Rufino Tamayo (TIME, Feb. 17), who now teaches art in
Brooklyn, was combing Mexico's prisons for new talent. Tamayo was sure
he would find enough for a fall show at the Brooklyn Museum Art School.

Mexican prisoners scorn anything like escape art. Instead of landscapes,
birds, or flowers, most of them daub away at private horrors. Samples:
a half-human fetus turning away in fright from a street, a huge fist...